Craig Shirley
2008-01-12 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

On Election Day in 1978, Republican State Senator John Briggs of California surveyed the wreckage of his political career. Briggs was the sponsor of Proposition 6, a ban against homosexuals teaching in the Golden State's public school system. Prop. 6 had been soundly defeated.

Early polling showed widespread support and Briggs had hoped to ride the amendment to the governorship. Though many opponents emerged, Briggs was asked by reporters who was to blame for its defeat and he replied, "Ronald Reagan."

Reagan, the self-described "libertarian-conservative" found the proposal deeply offensive and campaigned hard against it, seeing it as a violation of privacy and potentially subjecting teachers to blackmail.

Given his principles and intellectual courage, one can imagine why Reagan would find fault with the "Marriage Amendment" which some Republicans including George Bush are supporting.

Reagan saw the Constitution as a brilliant document because is does not say what the citizenry can not do, rather what government cannot do. It is a mechanical document of negative governance. The Marriage Amendment runs contrary to those principles and is thus offensive intellectually and historically, like silly proposal to ban flag burning.

Real conservatives scratch their heads when they see a political party so out of whack, it calls for overturning Roe and sending it back to the states but wonder why those same states are not capable of deciding their own marriage policies. The contradiction defies explanation and logic.

In the 1950's, Frank Meyer and L. Brent Bozell II gave a gift to the floundering GOP; a rationale for governing. These two brilliant conservative theoreticians devised the "fusionism" theory which brought together the economic right and the social right, which on the face of it seemed in conflict with each other.

They did so with a minimalist governing philosophy; too much government threaten the business classes and too much government threatened the family. This philosophy, for those with the courage to understand it and then articulate it served the GOP quite well…until recently.

The modern GOP and their enablers on K Street made a conscious decision to abandon this argument and remake the GOP into the second party of big government. When the Bush Republicans came to town, the religious right heard their siren's song of federal intervention.

The economic right also heard the song of money, access, power and the baubles of executive power. We are now witnessing the sorry spectacle of Washington bailing our banks and mortgage holders for engaging in bad faith agreements.

Of course, this is all understandable when a Republican president says, "when people hurt, government must be on the move." Can there be a Cabinet-level department of Anxiety Counseling far behind?

The Jeffersonian notion that power flows upwards from the people to the government and the phrase "public servant" are no longer applicable inside the GOP.

The new rationale of the existence of the GOP has led former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to proclaim that if he were elect president, he would ban smoking in the United States. Huckabee wants to make it the new "Mommycrat" party.

Reagan conservatives don't want the "Big Socialist Sisterism" of Hillary Clinton but they don't want the "Big Christian Brotherism" of Huckabee either. What they want is for Republican leaders to recognize their proper role and that is not with their fingers wrapped around their fellow Americans throats, saying how much they care about them.

In 1980, a reporter asked Ronald Reagan was his view of government was. He simply and elegantly replied that the role of government was to protect us from each other and not to protect us from ourselves. No real conservative would ever propose such nonsense as banning smoking in America.

The GOP is no longer the party of expanding freedom but increasing security. "In the name of security" has become one of the most dangerous phrases in America today. Is it really necessary to make Capitol Hill an armed camp as Republicans have done since September 11th? How much of this is really about keeping the American people at bay and not terrorists?

From Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Reagan, all understood that the expansion of freedom was what the GOP should stand for and this is what would make it great and successful.

The end of the French Revolution was marked by what was called its "Thermidor." Their Revolution collapsed amidst betrayal, corruption and hubris. So, too, the modern GOP is facing its demise but it will probably come with a whimper and not show trials and beheadings.

Some might say mores' the pity.

Craig Shirley is author of "The Reagan Revolution: The untold story of the campaign that started it all," from Thomas Nelson.